Local Author Spotlight: Ellie Raine’s Successful Story in Self-Publishing
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llie Raine is a Peachtree Corners resident with nine book titles to her name, most notably the NecroSeam Chronicles, which consist of a series of five epic fantasy novels and two prequels. Her writing has earned her recognition as a two-time winner of the Readers’ Favorite in the International Book Awards and first place in the fantasy division for Writer’s Digest’s Self-Published Book Awards in 2019,
as well as a couple other awards.
The NecroSeam Chronicles even have their own website, necroseam. com, which is themed around their fantastical namesake. There, Raine regularly engages with her active fanbase on her blog, posts her own artwork (and fanart, coming soon), sells merchandise, promotes her upcoming events and provides notes and a glossary on the world she’s built. There’s even a personality quiz you can take to find out what knight you are! (I’m a BladeSworn.) But who is Ellie Raine? How did her writing expand beyond her series to build a fantastic universe?
A visionary from the beginning
By Ivy Marie Clarke
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Raine explained that her love of magic goes back to her childhood. “I was a huge fantasy nerd, like the rest of my family,” she said. “I grew up on Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, books with dragons, Harry Potter, King Author, Final Fantasy, Zelda, tons of anime, the Hobbit, Lord of the Rings — you name it. If it
Peachtree Corners Magazine ■ August/September 2022 ■ LivingInPeachtreeCorners.com
didn’t have knights in shining armor, magic sorcerers and fire-breathing dragons, I wasn’t interested.” The joy she found from video games, storytelling and fantasy led her down the path of video game art and design, so she enrolled at the Art Institute of Atlanta to gain an education in that field. While she was enrolled, she took a creative writing course and started telling the story of the game she was developing. She found that she liked the writing format better than video game development, so she switched fields. “It was so much more fulfilling. It was like something just clicked, and I’ve been writing ever since,” Raine said. Today, that video game turned creative writing assignment has turned into the NecroSeam Chronicles.
The NecroSeam Chronicles It took Raine over 10 years to write the epic, gothic, high fantasy series for which she is best known. In addition to Terry Pratchett, Raine said she peachtreecornerslife
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draws inspiration from Rachel Aaron and Brandon Sanderson (notable for his creation of the Cosmere fictional universe) as well as from her own life. “Being present in the moment is probably the most effective tool for sparking creativity, especially for fantasy. I have a lot of fun asking, ‘what if things worked this way instead?’, and those are the questions that usually prompt a new story,” Raine said. The Necroseam Chronicles have been described as “[i]f Tim Burton had written Lord of the Rings” by Vincent E.M. Thorn, author of the Dreamscape Voyager Trilogy. “They are an epic fantasy series about twin necromancer brothers who were born with split abilities to control the dead,” is how Raine described the NecroSeam Chronicles in a TikTok video. “One resurrects corpses, the other puts souls inside them, so together, they kind of make one necromancer. But one of the brothers gets his soul ripped out of his body and trapped inside his brother, so they go on a journey to figure out what happened to the othpeachtreecornerslife
